Methodology 1.0
How Global Indie Radar is made
We count cross-market presence to find products. We do not use it to estimate downloads, revenue, or a fictional global rank.
The global edition is not the Taiwan chart with the country changed to the United States. One storefront still shows only one market, while averaging local ranks would create a chart Apple never published.
Market sample
The first snapshot covers 51 storefronts: eight in the Americas, 22 in Europe, 15 across Asia and the Middle East, and six in Oceania and Africa. This is not every App Store. If the sample changes, the methodology version changes too.
How cross-market presence is calculated
- Collect the paid top 100 from all 51 storefronts in one run.
- Record the date and primary timezone.
- Merge localized product names by Apple App ID.
- Add one market whenever an app appears in a local top 100.
- Calculate average rank only across markets where the app appeared.
- Keep storefront codes and positions for verification.
The count is not weighted by population, device count, GDP, store revenue, or currency. It measures geographic breadth, not sales.
Identity labels
- Solo developer verified: a current first-party source explicitly says one person builds or maintains the product.
- Creator verified: the maker is known, but the current team size is not.
- Individual seller / team size unverified: Apple shows a personal seller name, which does not prove that every part of the work was done alone.
- Independent company: ownership is independent, but the organization may still employ dozens of people.
Procreate Pocket is the control case. Procreate describes itself as independent and self-funded, while an Apple developer profile reported a team of roughly 60 people in 2022.
Known limits
- The first edition covers Apple's overall paid chart only.
- Positions below 100 are invisible, so an absent app may be unranked or unavailable.
- The feed has no download, transaction, revenue, featuring, or advertising data.
- The 51 requests belong to one collection run, not the same millisecond.
- Public About pages may be out of date.
Advertising and corrections
The site uses Google AdSense, but advertisers do not control product selection, labels, or reviews. There are no paid placements in this edition. If sponsorship, affiliate links, review codes, or special data access are introduced later, they will be disclosed before the article body.
Ranking changes do not overwrite old snapshots. Factual corrections to maker identity, team size, price, or product data will be noted on the relevant page.